Human Weakness and God's Faithfulness - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 20 we see another failure of Abraham’s trust in God’s promises and the work of God’s redemption through the brokenness of man.
Transcript:
Life is a fragile thing. I'm reminded of this every once in a while, when I see something happen that could have been catastrophic for me or someone I love, but which turned out differently by a matter of seconds. Last summer, we had relatives from Texas visiting at the family cottage on Wilson's Reservoir.
And on the way over, they drove through the wooded lane and into the driveway. Not 30 seconds later, we heard a giant crash as a huge tree limb tumbled down from above onto that lane where they had just been. If they had been just a bit later, the circumstances could have been tragic. Yes, I've seen God's mercy in circumstances like that.
Life is a fragile thing. And to make matters worse, we are bulls in a china shop. Like me, you can look back on your life and remember shameful moments. You can remember times when you weren't the person you should have been. I remember that time in my own life. I remember that while God did allow me to stray, He also protected me from really destroying my life.
Maybe you too can remember times when God saved you from yourself. When He gave you mercy and blessings that you didn't deserve. And it made all the difference. I have to say that it's truly mysterious. It's the sort of mystery that just gets deeper the longer that you look at it. I don't understand why God intervenes when he does, especially when we don't deserve it.
But he does. The only explanation is that he loves us. And what he allows and what he holds back is anchored in his wisdom. I believe that's what we see here in Genesis 20. We see all kinds of human weakness and foolishness. Dark silhouettes against the shining brightness of God's faithfulness to his promises.
The darkness is disappointing. But the brilliant light is captivating. So before you rush to judge Abraham, Sarah, Abimelek, consider your own darkness, your own weakness, your own foolishness, and the mercy that has remained for you. And so with that in mind we turn to Genesis 20. Now the thing that's very interesting about this episode is that when you're reading it, you probably have a point of deja vu where you're like, didn't something like this happen already?
And you'd be correct in thinking that. Because you might recall that back in Genesis 12, Abraham gets himself into a similar situation in Egypt, where he tells Sarah, hey, just tell them that I'm your sister. Pharaoh took Sarah, and they eventually found out that Sarah was Abraham's wife, and Pharaoh was very upset, said leave, he gave them a bunch of things, and they left.
So it's interesting to see that this is kind of a pattern, this is kind of a, a strategy for Abraham to kind of deal with some of the uncertainties that he's facing. And we'll dig into that a little bit more. Where this is all playing out is in the area of Gerar. Now you might remember that Abraham is kind of a nomadic fellow.
He's got herds, so he doesn't necessarily stay absolutely fixed in one place, but he ranges and he spent some time in this city called Gerar, and there should be a map that shows this.
Maybe not. Maybe it didn't make it. But if you know, if you have any familiarity with the geography of Israel, if you know where the Gaza Strip is, you know how that's like right along the ocean, Gerar is just a little bit further inland from that. And so that's where he was. And it seems as though that that city was a Philistine city, that gets revealed later on in Genesis 26 where Isaac does the very same thing that Abraham does here.
Just, fascinating to see how he follows in his father's footsteps. Now, if you understand the whole story of what's going on here with Abraham and Sarah, you can understand why what's playing out here is such a problem. Why it would be a problem for Abimelek to take Sarah under the pretensions of making him, making her his wife, adding him, adding her to his harem.
Because, God has made a promise to Abraham. And to Sarah. That he was going to make a great nation from Abraham. And that the whole world would be blessed through Abraham. And that this was to come through Sarah. That Sarah was to be the one that would give birth to this child. Not Hagar, not any other woman.
It was going to be Sarah. Now, all of that seems up in the air, up for grabs. So the question is, is what is God going to do to deliver them from this problem of their own creation? But we'll see very shortly. And what he does is, is really interesting is. Rather than going to Abraham or Sarah, what God does is he goes to Abimelek.
He speaks to Abimelek, this pagan king, who apparently though had some fear of God. And he approaches him in a dream and tells him what he has in fact done, unknowingly so. Now Abimelek had sent for Sarah, it says that he sent for Sarah and took her. Which kind of sounds like not the nicest way of going about things.
It doesn't talk about how he talked with Abraham about this. Maybe it was just word had gotten around where it had been said that Sarah was only Abraham's sister. And so he was like, alright, I'm just going to swing by and pick her up. So, that's not great. But, in Abimelek's defense, He honestly didn't know that Sarah was Abraham's wife.
And so God comes to Abraham and says, you're as good as dead because you've taken a married woman. And, he says, well, you know, I, I didn't know this. And so moving on into verse six, we find God's reply. God said to him in a dream, Yes, I know that you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me.
That is why I did not let you touch her. Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die. Early in the next morning, Abimelek summoned all his officials, and when he told them all that had happened, they were very much afraid.
Then Abimelek called Abraham in and said, What have you done to us? How have I wronged you that you have brought such guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should never be done. And Abimelek asked Abraham, What was your reason for doing this? So, the thing that just stands out from this, how everything's playing out here, of how God has come to Abimelek to in a Dream and how, and of how Abimelek is responding is the fact that God is actually acting here to protect Abimelek.
Abimelek understood that taking another man's wife was wrong. That wasn't, that, that understanding wasn't something that was exclusive to Abraham and his family, that was widely understood in the ancient Near East. Like that was something you did not do. And, And so, this is why God has intervened in this situation, and he gives Abimelek an opportunity to do what is right.
He's been ignorant, but he has an opportunity to do what is right. And so, what he must do is return Sarah back to Abraham, and ask that Abraham would pray for him. And, this reminds us of what God has already said in Genesis 12: 3. That, that Abraham would be able to bring blessings on people but also if anyone who cursed him they would also fall under a curse and so you have this hanging in the balance either Abimelek is going to be cursed because of how he handles the situation or he's going to be blessed as he returns Sarah back to Abraham. We hear testimony of this of God's care for Abraham and all the patriarchs, in Psalm 105:5-15 says, remember the wonders he has done, his miracles and the judgments he pronounced you, his servants, the descendants of Abraham, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers his covenant forever. The promise he made for a thousand generations. The covenant he made with Abraham. The oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree. To Israel as an everlasting covenant. To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.
When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it,They wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another, He allowed no one to oppress them, for their sake he rebuked kings, do not touch my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm.
So that's what's going on here with, with Abraham and Abimelek. God is intervening. He's protecting Abimelek. He's given him a chance to do what's right, but he's also protecting Abraham against the harm that would come upon him. If, if Abimelech took it, took his wife and all the plans, all the promises that God had made to him were scrambled.
And so again, what we're seeing here in this passage is it's very easy to just get caught up in Abimelek and Abraham and the dreams and all. What we should really be seeing here is, is God and his faithfulness. So Abimelek confronts Abraham in verses 9 and 10, basically saying, This is wrong, man. Why did you treat me this way?
Why would, why would you do this to me? Basically, what did I do to you? And we find Abraham's reply in verses 11 through 13, which clarifies some things, but also raises some questions. It says, Abraham replied, I said to myself, there is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.
Besides, she is really my sister, the daughter of my father, though not of my mother. And she became my wife. And when God had me wander from my father's household, I said to her, this is how you can show your love to me Everywhere we go, say of me, he is my brother. So what we learned here from Abraham is that this had become Abraham's general policy since leaving Haran for the land of Canaan.
That wherever they were to go, that Sarah was to say, He's my brother. Now why? Why did he tell her to do that? It's because he's afraid. He says, there's surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. Now, apparently, Abimelek isn't as bad as maybe Abraham suspected he would be.
He does have some, some fear, fear of God here. But it's, it, Abraham's not completely off base for having some fears. We have to understand that, I mean, the time and the place in which he's living is kind of like the wild west where might makes right. And so Abraham apparently felt vulnerable. And it seems as though Sarah must have been a fairly attractive woman.
Now, this is the thing that's really kind of interesting is because at this point, Sarah's 90. Now, nothing against 90 year olds, but, you know, not too many kings are swooping in, you know, to add a 90 year old to their harem, usually. So, this makes us kind of step back and say, is, were people aging at a different rate at this time?
I think that might be a fair supposition, to suppose that maybe they were aging at a different rate. We can also say that beauty isn't just skin deep. I think we talked about that last time when we were going talking about how the same situation played out in Egypt where she could have had a very noble bearing about herself.
So just for your imagination's sake though, maybe you could imagine that she, she looks as a woman would look maybe between like her 50s and 60s, but she just happens to be a very strikingly beautiful woman. So, Abraham's afraid. But we, at least it's asking, should he be afraid? Because remember, he has God and his promises.
God has promised that he would protect Abraham and that he would raise up this family that would be a blessing to all nations. So, really, Abraham should be trusting God rather than trusting in this ploy of kind of pulling the wolves over the eyes of the various kings in the region. So, I think we can say that what Abraham does here is not commendable.
And it's not entirely truthful either. because he is hiding the fact that she is his wife. Even while he is telling a partial truth, though, that apparently she is his sister, which at this point, we're all kind of like, that's, that's weird. He married his half sister. he says that she was the daughter of my father, though not of my mother.
Now, in some of the commentators I read, it was suggested that maybe it wasn't. maybe she was a relation through his father, like a cousin. So not literally the daughter of his father, but we can't know. So we kind of have to just take the text as, as it is. Apparently he married his, his half sister.
Now, intuitively we tell, it seems to us like that's something that you shouldn't do. And what's really interesting is that for 400 years later, In Leviticus, it's made explicit that this isn't something that should be done. In Leviticus 20: 17, it says, If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace.
They are to be publicly removed from their people. He who has dishonored his sister will be held responsible. We see basically the same thing in Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 27. So we think like, Oh, you know, this is like some big, bad contradiction here. Well, just consider something. Moses wrote the book of Genesis.
He also wrote the book of Leviticus. And everyone who was making copies of these texts had a more complete understanding of these books than we did. So it's not as though it's like some surprise to them that You know, you have this law, but then you also have the fact that Abraham is married to his half sister.
If they wanted to undo that, to kind of paper that over, they could have either dropped the fact that Sarah was his sister. They could have changed the law a little bit. But they don't. They keep both. Which, to me, that seems like a true testimony of the truthfulness of scripture. The fact that they retain both of these facts, the Abraham was married to his half sister, and that later is commanded that you should not marry your half sister. So is this a problem? No, because Abraham wasn't violating any command that was given. This is a command that was given 400 years later. And if we really want to kind of get our minds spinning, you have to think at some point, you know, in early humanity, Men and women had to marry their brothers or sisters.
Certainly their half brothers, half sisters. So, this was something that was permitted back then. There was no law. and we could also speculate, just as we were speculating that aging was different back then. that perhaps the genetic problems that we have today were not problematic back then. But it became problematic as time goes on and so it was later forbidden.
So it is a messy situation. I'm not trying to say it's not a messy situation. It is. But it's not morally problematic for Abraham because it was something that was still permitted at that time. But it still created problems for Abraham. Abimelek took Sarah, the first chance that he got. Abraham and Sarah have been less than truthful leading up to this.
And if we're just looking at everything on the whole, the only one who shines here is God. He protected Abimelek as well as Abraham and Sarah. And in verses 14 through 17, we see how everything gets squared away. It says there, Then Abimelek brought sheep and cattle, and male and female slaves, and gave them to Abraham.
And he returned Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelek said, My land is before you. Live wherever you like. To Sarah he said, I am giving your brother a thousand shekels of silver. This is to cover the offense against you before all who are with you. You are completely vindicated. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelek, his wife and his female slave so they could have children again, for the Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek's household from conceiving because of Abraham's wife, Sarah. So the way that Abimelek rectifies the situation, even though Abraham hasn't really given a satisfactory explanation for why he's done what he's done.
If you were Abimelek, you probably wouldn't really be happy with the explanation that he's given. But still, all the same, Abimelek does what is honorable. To restore relations between him and Abraham and Sarah. To restore Sarah's honor. So he gives them sheep, cattle. He does give them slaves, obviously.
Again, we're dealing with a broken. We just talked about him marrying his half sister and just the things were much different back then. And we have the broken system of slavery back then as well. And the wonderful thing that we see along with God's redemptive plan through Abraham. How you start with one family and it goes to encompass the whole world through Jesus Christ.
As we see God beginning to heal and cure humanity as we go along forward. Where progressively it's understood that if you're to love your neighbor, you cannot enslave your neighbor. By this time, this is a convention. There are, there are no minimum wage jobs. You're not working at McDonald's. You are either a noble, a lord, or you're probably serving as, as, as a slave in someone's household.
He also gives a thousand shekels of silver for the offense. And then, Abraham prays. And Abimelech and his household are healed, but they're not healed by Abraham's prayer itself. Remember it says there that, and God healed Abimelech and his household. And I only point that out again to just notice that God is the real actor in all this.
God is the one who's really delivering this situation. And, and Abraham's just an instrument here. It's interesting to see that what God had done in order to protect Sarah was that apparently there had been some situation. We don't, we won't need to get into the detail that are speculated about that, but for some reason or another, Abimelek and, the women in his household were not able to, conceive and have children while Sarah was there.
Now this is acting as a reminder. of sorts to Abraham and Sarah that God has power in this area. Remember, their big problem is, is that they're super old. Abraham's like a hundred, Sarah's ninety. They haven't been able to have any kids. How could they possibly have kids at this point? God's reminding them that He has power in this area.
And that the promise that He's given that Sarah will bear a son will come to pass. And so He closed up the wombs of the women in, Abimelek's household, and then he opened them up, and he restored their fertility. And he's going to offer the same restoration to Sarah, so that she gives birth to a son.
There's also a little bit of an interesting comparison here, between this situation, and then what happens, like, 900 years later, when the Philistines take the Ark of the Covenant. They take the Ark of the Covenant. They bring it into the temple of Dagon, and then their idol, Dagon, falls over and cracks.
We find this in 1 Samuel 5 and 6. There's disease. There's all kinds of problems that were happening as they took the Ark of the Covenant. And things were only made right when they sent the Ark of the Covenant back with gifts. And so we see kind of some parallels here between the Ark of the Covenant and then Sarah being taken.
God protects what he has claimed as his own. You see, this passage isn't really about Abimelek, Abraham, or Sarah. It's about God and his faithfulness. And so, if you walk out of here today and someone asks you, What was the sermon about? And you're like, With all these details, sometimes you can walk out feeling, I don't know what the sermon was about.
Just remember this. It's about God. God has promised to bless the world through Abraham, Sarah and their family, and nothing is going to get in the way of that. And so he protects them in spite of their own foolishness. Not just for their sake, but for ours. God's plan to redeem mankind began with Abraham,
culminated with Jesus Christ, and now God is using the church to invite people all over the globe to become citizens of his kingdom through Jesus. God remains living and active today and you are part of his rescue plan. God planned to reclaim your life through Jesus. He planned to save you and includes you in this mission of bringing people back to God.
God's purpose is greater than our foolishness. All the foolish things we've done all of our lives. All those times that he saved you from yourself has led up to here and now. You have believed. Great. Now you should ask yourself this. You should ask God this. God, how do you want to use me? You have a role to play in this church if you will just seek it.
You have a light to shine in your workplace if you will just ask God, what do you want me to do? The great news is that while God includes us, success doesn't depend on us. We are weak. We stumble. But Jesus has stood tall where we have come short. And this has changed everything. Something new has begun.
Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 -21. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone, the new is here. All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors. As though God was making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
All of us, individually, collectively, all of us have been given this ministry of reconciliation. Collectively, we are the people who get to tell others, God loves you and wants you back. Jesus has made a way. We have been given mercy so that others may also receive mercy. Let us pray.
Father, when we come to passages like this, it's very easy for us to become bewildered by the messiness of the human situation that's playing out.
Father, help us to see in this passage a mirror. That just as we see the weakness and foolishness that plays out here, that we are reminded that we too are weak and foolish. But that just as you showed your mercy and faithfulness to Abraham and Sarah and Abimelek, Father, that you have shown this same mercy. to us because of your great purpose. Father, Father, we pray that even as we enjoy this mercy that we've received because of Jesus Christ, that we would be reminded that there is a purpose in it, that you have a plan for us collectively and individually. Father, help us to live in light of that purpose.
God, help us to not be fearful as Abraham was, but that we would instead trust you and follow your leading. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday, as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham.
It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)